A new global study by workplace provider Regus highlights that British office culture is detrimental to the health and home lives of many workers and that too few employers are backing up rhetoric on flexible working with real action.

Many businesses will not see this as a problem for them and will continue to stick rigidly to their 9 – 5.30 working day; expecting employees to be present during these times.  However, businesses do need to sit up and take note as the study also shows that three quarters of office workers (74%) now believe that flexible working makes them more productive.  84% believe that giving staff a choice of work location and hours improves loyalty to their employer and, ultimately, staff retention.

Steve Purdy, UK Managing Director at Regus, comments “With all the talk about flexible working, it is surprising that so many company cultures seem out of kilter with the rhetoric. They don’t seem to realise the win-win benefits that flexible working can bring on both the employee and company side.

For many small to medium businesses (SMEs) the headache of managing flexible working practices and having processes and systems in place to support the regime are not worth the effort.

However, flexible practices actually bring huge benefits to organisations which are growing such as:

• Savings on office costs and other operating expenses through an office-sharing environment
• Circumventing geographical limits and increasing the hiring pool through flexible and  remote work options

So, how do businesses adopt a culture to support flexible working, they need to look at their infrastructure and capability to support their business operations.

The growth of Cloud technologies has helped  businesses to adopt a more flexible working culture without losing the control and visibility they need to grow.   With the ability to pay as you go, not invest in major infrastructure in-house, have real-time data available any time, businesses are finding the jump to the cloud a question of when not if.

One such solution, SAP Business ByDesign, has been experiencing rapid growth in uptake.  It offers the SME a complete, integrated suite that can run their whole enterprise – financials, human resources, sales, procurement, customer service, and supply chain via the cloud.  At the same time employees can access business functionality and analytics anytime, anywhere with a broad range of mobile devices.  Delivering them the ability to provide flexible working practices in these changing times but still allowing them to keep control of their processes.

To see how SAP Business ByDesign could help your business become more flexible watch the following demonstration:  SAP Business ByDesign

For more information on how SAP Business ByDesign can help your business, please visit www.incloudsolutions.co.uk

More than a million SME’s are facing late payments in the UK as evidenced by research undertaken by BACS in July 2012 and confirmed by additional research undertaken by Aldermore Bank.

“Late payments are a continuing drain on small and medium sized business owners in the UK. It’s critically important, at a time when we’re looking for SMEs to drive the economy out of recession, that they are freed from the shackles of late payments” says Damon Walford, Managing Director of Aldermore Invoice Finance.

The research also showed that SMEs typically have to wait 43.4 days beyond payment terms before an invoice is settled.  Additionally a UK SME will spend almost 14 days a year chasing debt; this means that delayed invoice settlement will cost smaller UK business around £700 million in 2012.

For SMEs the pressure of chasing debt on their business is huge, with 35% of those surveyed said that late payment of up to just £20,000 would be enough to put them out of business.

Mike Hutchinson from BACS said “We urge SMEs to look at taking control over their cash flow wherever they can be automating payments where possible to save valuable time and administration costs”.

Although this is a good starting point SMEs need to be doing more than just automating payments they need to be taking control of their business processes to make sure they are invoicing their customers correctly on time, taking advantage of earlier payments from suppliers, managing employees expenses more effectively and to do all this they need to have a total visibility within their business.

Whilst they may have this information in a finance package, it is often not integrated with their billing, procurement and expenses systems.  This means that at month-end, financial departments often have a view which is not the true view and can be up to weeks old.   What SMEs need is a real-time view of their cash flow, so that they can make the right decisions at the right time.

They need software that is integrated to give them a 360^o view of what is going on.  They need to be planning & projecting what their cash flow is going to be year-on year, quarter-on-quarter, week by week and if necessary day-to-day.  An accurate cash flow projection can alert businesses to trouble well before it strikes.

Using more sophisticated joined up software to centrally manage and control payables and receivables, automate payment and clearing processes, quickly and efficiently create and file tax returns, organisations gain real-time visibility data enables organisation to become more nimble and efficient and at the same time  enhancing their cash flow.

Companies looking at managing their cashflow more efficiently are looking at SAP’s Business ByDesign.  A fully integrated business solution offering support for a company’s business processes and delivered as a service providing a cost-effective solution with no need for hefty capital investment.

SAP Business ByDesign provides you with timely and accurate visibility into your cash inflows and outflows so you can make sound cash management decisions.  It enables you to analyse and forecast liquidity using real-time data reporting. It also provides complete transparency into every financial transaction with full audit trails, approvals, and document flows.

To see how SAP Business ByDesign could help your business watch the following demonstration:  SAP Business ByDesign

For more information on how SAP Business ByDesign can help your business, please visit www.incloudsolutions.co.uk